Unless I missed something, the word “telomere” doesn’t occur in the article or its source paper—rather, it discusses the rate of DNA methylation.
IMO, the key passage in the paper is this:
However, any genetic regulation for a species may potentially be a secondary factor as there may be other environmental selective pressures. This may be the case with species which have lifespans post reproductive age and therefore, there may be non-genetic factors that may be more predictive of their maximum lifespan.
I suspect that the methylation rate is actually tracking the end of the reproductive stage of the lifecycle, rather than the entire lifespan—it’s just that humans have an unusually long post-reproductive stage.
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan of a human, determined by genetics, and the only reason we can live past 38 is due to unnatural interventions ie medicine
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan predicted by their model—but it also says their model has an R2 of 0.76, meaning it only predicts about 76% of the variation in the actual measured values. And then they discuss other factors that could account for the remaining 24% of the variation, including post-reproductive-age lifespan.
Unless I missed something, the word “telomere” doesn’t occur in the article or its source paper—rather, it discusses the rate of DNA methylation.
IMO, the key passage in the paper is this:
I suspect that the methylation rate is actually tracking the end of the reproductive stage of the lifecycle, rather than the entire lifespan—it’s just that humans have an unusually long post-reproductive stage.
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan of a human, determined by genetics, and the only reason we can live past 38 is due to unnatural interventions ie medicine
It’s saying 38 is the maximum lifespan predicted by their model—but it also says their model has an R2 of 0.76, meaning it only predicts about 76% of the variation in the actual measured values. And then they discuss other factors that could account for the remaining 24% of the variation, including post-reproductive-age lifespan.